[e2e] What if there were no well known numbers?

[Saikat Guha]

On Tue, 2006-08-08 at 10:26 -0700, Joe Touch wrote:
> In a two-party system, "receiver open to input" always precedes "sender
> issues message".

When talking about the present Internet, does the "two-party system"
refer to only the sending host and the receiving host? What about the
corresponding middles -- the corporate firewall that most of us are
behind, or the NAT that many home users are behind?

Agreed that the receiver must be "open to input" before the sender sends
the message, but the receiver need not be open-to-input _for any and all
possible senders_ -- it can be open-to-input for a trusted middle entity
that can vet the sender's message and relay it to the receiver. (The
middle entity here is open-to-input for all, and suitably protected.)

In keeping with the parent-child analogy, I would consider that similar
to the relationship between my host and my firewall -- not that
interesting since both are open-to-input from both. The parent can,
however, shield the child from a _stranger_ either proactively or
reactively: in the proactive case, the child is not open-to-input from
the stranger until the parent introduces the two.

> In both cases, receiving precedes sending.

Is it _necessary and required_ to be able to receive *from anyone and
everyone* before someone can send to you?

My 2c.
-- 
Saikat
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/end2end-interest/attachments/20060809/c135c8d3/attachment.bin